


Monologue

by Khashana, read by Khashana (Khashana)



Series: Disrespect!verse [6]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Background Mako/Wu, Break Up, Gay Panic, Gen, High School, I made it really easy to skip, Internalized Homophobia, Podfic, Podfic Length: 20-30 Minutes, Podfic and fic together, Theatre, Theatre Kid Zuko, background LOK characters, but don't worry I'm gay, but hear me out okay, endgame friends for life mai&zuko, graphic depictions of self-harm, oblivious baby gay Zuko, okay figuring out how to tag this was a hot mess so bear with me, remember how Zuko said in Keep that he wasn't doing so hot? yeah, this begins maiko, this is 100 percent book 1 Zuko
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25205872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/Khashana, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/read%20by%20Khashana
Summary: There’s only so much awestruck admiration of other men Zuko can do before Mai starts to think something’s up.Please do read all the tags before you rule this in or out.
Relationships: Mai & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Disrespect!verse [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782586
Comments: 39
Kudos: 434





	Monologue

**Author's Note:**

> The self-harm scene is bracketed by lines of asterisks (**********). When you get to one, scroll till you get to the other. You won't miss any plot. If you do skip it, 'implied/referenced self-harm' is still applicable, but waaay less so than any of the fics thus far.
> 
> No beta today. I am my own theatre SME.
> 
> [Podfic here](https://khashanakalashtar.wordpress.com/portfolio/monologue/)

Zuko transferred to Mai’s school in sophomore year and they bonded instantly at the outcasts’ table, his emo to her goth.

“Who set your face on fire?” she’d drawled.

“My dad,” he said, fixing her with a scowl that dared her to comment. “Because I spoke out of turn.”

“That’s fucked up,” said Mai without a change of expression. “At least my dad just locks me in my room for weeks.” And that was all it took.

Mai had had a crush on Zuko for only a few weeks before she figured out he was never going to notice and asked him out herself.

“Hey. Do you want to go on a date with me?”

“Okay.”

And that was that.

“I had long hoped you two would find happiness together,” Zuko’s uncle Iroh told her once. “You have much in common.”

Mostly, it was the child abuse, Mai thinks later. They were sixteen and drowning in depression. Mai was desperate for the attention her parents wouldn’t give her but largely incapable of asking for it, and Zuko had just escaped his father and was still a volatile mess of a teenager prone to shouting and being as dramatic as possible at all times. Iroh made him pick an extracurricular, so Mai followed him into drama club.

“You want to act?” she asked him disbelievingly.

“No, I don’t think I’d be good at that. Tech might be fun, though.” He ran his fingers over the drama club poster, over and over. “You’d be a good actress.”

She startled. “You think?”

“Only for a certain kind of role. Like, you’d have to be basically playing yourself.” For crying out loud. That was pure Zuko, right there. “But you’d have a lot of presence if you talked louder, and you’re really pretty, so you’d be really good at that.” At least she never had to doubt that his compliments were genuine.

Mai did audition, but wasn’t cast. “Still too quiet, probably,” Zuko said. “That’s okay, you can work backstage with me.”

Backstage crew wasn’t half bad, actually. They made sure everything was in place at the beginning of the show, cleared set and props between scenes, and made out on the staircase during Ginger’s long monologue scene. Mai thought they could also make out during Bolin’s long monologue scenes, but Zuko always wanted to _watch_ those, limited as their view was from the wings.

“He’s so good,” he whispered to Mai on a number of occasions. “The emotion in his voice when he thinks Ginger’s dead. How could you miss this?”

The director decided to add a quick change for Bolin between two scenes, and Zuko volunteered to help. His job was just to hold the top up by the shoulders so Bolin could whip off the shirt he was wearing, slide his arms right into the new one, and button it up himself, but Zuko treated it like a sacred calling.

“It’s important to have the costume change there,” he told Mai. “The color change symbolizes Nuktuk’s changed heart after Juji dies. And it’s a much better look during the doomsday scene. The blue kind of washes him out, but the green really sets off the visual against the doomsday device and Unalaq.”

“And doesn’t wash him out,” said Mai, not entirely sure she was processing this conversation correctly.

“Well, of course not, his eyes are green.”

“So you’re in favor of this costume change because it brings out his _eyes._ ”

“No! Haven’t you been listening? It’s thematic!”

“Are you enjoying working on the show?” Iroh asked her once when she was over at their place.

“I had no idea Zuko was so into theatre,” she answered dryly.

“Oh, yes! We have a recording of _Love Amongst the Dragons_ on tape that he watched until the film unspooled when he was thirteen. But luckily, I had made a copy!” The old man tapped his nose smugly. Mai couldn’t help but smile.

“Uncle,” moaned Zuko. “Cut it out.”

“Nonsense! Why don’t you show young Mai? I’m sure she’d love to see it!”

“Yeah, I would,” she told him.

So that was how Mai found herself watching Zuko watch an old VHS tape on a tiny television, completely entranced by it.

“Hou-ting Wu is so good in this,” he told her, embarrassment forgotten. “Look at his _face._ Isn’t it the most compelling thing?”

Wu cradled his dying best friend in his arms, agony etched onto his features. “And call the noblest to the audience,” he proclaimed. “For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune: I have some rights of memory in this kingdom.”

“The lighting and costume choices here are so good, too,” Zuko added. “Look at the aesthetics.”

Personally, Mai thought the same thing she had when he was arguing for thematic colors in _Hero of the South_ : there really wasn’t anything special about the color scheme, but the guy sure was attractive.

“Did you enjoy the play?” Iroh asked her afterwards.

“I did,” she said honestly. “I never knew Zuko had a celebrity crush on a stage actor, either.”

“It is not a crush!” yelled Zuko.

“Calm yourself, nephew, it is but an expression,” said Iroh. “I assume you are referring to Hou-ting Wu? He’s quite well known in the acting world.”

“Is he?”

“Oh, yes. For his ability, certainly, but also for making headlines by publicly announcing that he and his old friend and frequent scene partner, Yin Mako—who I believe is also in that film—were gay and living together as partners. This was before one just came out and said these things, you know. Even in the theatre world, it was something understood but not spoken.”

Mai chanced a look at Zuko, who was red-faced and scowling.

“Good for them,” she said.

She let Zuko get away with it for almost a year. But of course the most interesting topic for high school couples is, and long has been, “have you done it yet,” and eventually even Zuko felt the pressure.

They were lying on her bed, kissing and groping just a little, when Zuko smirked at her and whispered something that made her heart fall.

“D’you wanna go further?”

She did, oh god she did so badly on a level of pure attraction, but the idea filled her with _wrongness._

“No,” she whispered, and caught his hand where it was rubbing little circles into her hip.

He frowned at her. “Why not?”

She could have said she wasn’t ready. She could have said she was too afraid of getting pregnant and how her parents would disown her, and she could probably even have said she wasn’t that attracted to him and caused less damage than she did that day. All of these possibilities went through her head.

But at the end of it all, Mai told him the truth.

At the end of it all, Mai sat up and pushed Zuko off her and said, “Are you even attracted to me?”

His face was the picture of confusion. “Of course I am!”

“Really, Zuko? Are you even half as attracted to me as you are to Cho Bolin, or Hou-ting Wu?”

His confusion twisted into outrage and he drew himself up.

“I’m not GAY, Mai! How dare you imply that! That’s disgusting!”

“Disgusting?” she broke in. “You think Wu and Mako’s relationship is disgusting?”

He flapped a hand as if to wave away her words. “No—of course not, I didn’t mean in general, I meant for _me_ , don’t change the subject!”

“I’m not!” she shouted back. “You’d rather watch a handsome boy on stage in a shirt that brings out his eyes than kiss your girlfriend literally any time!”

“STOP SAYING THAT!” he roared. “I’m not—I can’t believe you’d think that! How dare you accuse me of—of—UGH!” He flung himself to his feet and stormed out of her house.

He didn’t come back. Not the next day, or the next week. He ignored her at school, and eventually, she stopped trying.

Zuko manages to avoid the conversation until the beginning of sophomore year, when Iroh is once again attempting to get him to leave his dorm and socialize.

“Why don’t you go back to theatre, nephew? You loved that!”

Curling guilt twists up Zuko’s chest. “I can’t, Uncle. Not after Mai.” It comes out in a whisper.

“Oh, Zuko.” His uncle sounds sad. “You can’t let one relationship that ended badly ruin an entire hobby for you.”

“It’s not just that. I was _so_ shitty to her, Uncle. She knew I was gay, and I wasn’t ready to hear it, and I yelled at her and shut her out completely.” His throat tightens until he can’t say more.

“Have you tried reaching out to her, to apologize?”

“I’m afraid.” His voice breaks. “Will you…will you stay on the line with me?”

“Of course.” Uncle’s voice is so, so gentle.

Zuko puts the call on speaker and navigates to his texts. He opens a new message and types M-a-i into the search bar. Their last text conversation loads, years old by now.

_I’m really sorry about everything. I know it’s too little, too late, but I wanted you to know. And also you were right all along._

After a moment, a reply pops up.

_Who is this?_

Okay. She deleted his number, that’s fair.

_Zuko_

The texting icon appears, then vanishes, then appears again.

_Brah I hate to say this but you have the wrong number._

He’s tempted to ask for proof, but ‘brah’ is good enough. Mai would never think to call him that.

_Oh. Sorry._

“She changed her _number,_ ” he says out loud.

“Oh, _nephew._ ”

***********

He hangs up the phone, and he can still see Mai’s face, wounded but proud, before he cut her out of his life. One of his worst mistakes. He tries not to think about it, generally, but it’s here now. Everything about the world is not quite real, like there’s a layer of cotton between him and his body. His eyes won’t focus on anything like he can’t convince them there’s anything there to see.

The skin of his arms is screaming.

His legs walk over to the desk. His hands open the drawer and pull out the lighter. Push his sleeve up. Flick the little wheel and hold it to the skin, just long enough to hurt.

The scream eases.

Zuko does it again, and a third time, until the screaming stops.

Calmly, he undresses and wraps himself in a towel, then walks to the shower and turns it on, setting the temperature to somewhere between cool and lukewarm. It would be simpler to do this in a sink, but nobody will notice if he’s standing in a shower for ten or twenty minutes, unlike if he sticks his forearm in a sink for that long. 

Uncle never asked him to stop. He just asked him to hurt himself in the safest way he can. Zuko can do that much.

*************

Mai loved Zuko until it hurt too much to love him, and so she hates him instead. That’s not what she says to her mother when she emails to tell Mai that Iroh has reached out to her on Zuko’s behalf. She tells her mother okay. But it is what she tells Iroh when he calls.

“I don’t want to talk to Zuko. I hate Zuko.”

“Oh, my dear.” Iroh sounds sad. “Do you not need closure? I know Zuko does. He still feels very guilty over what he did to you.”

“He should.”

“Please do not mistake the intensity of his distress. Zuko has not been involved in theatre since he left you. I do not believe he even watches Love Amongst the Dragons anymore. He associates it all too strongly with you.”

Mai is aware that she is being manipulated.

She is also aware that it’s working.

She doesn’t appreciate it.

“I’ll think about it,” she says finally.

“That’s all I ask.”

Zuko feels that bad about it? If Mai remembers correctly, he’s been watching that stupid play (all right, that fairly decent play) since he was a kid.

Perhaps it’s not guilt, she thinks savagely. Maybe he left it all behind because he still can’t face the fact he’s gay.

She almost wishes she could call Iroh and ask, but she can’t out him if he hasn’t come out, and Iroh can’t out him to her if he has. And it’s not like he has a Facebook to check.

He was a terrible boyfriend, even before he dumped her! Always angry, always losing his temper, But almost immediately the voice in her head says _can you blame him, after what happened to him?_ She can. She definitely can.

Mai sighs.

In the end, she shows up because she can’t stop thinking about it, and getting angry all over again at him, and she wants it over.

She calls Iroh a week or so before fall break starts, to make sure Zuko will be off, too.

“Yes, that will be fine! Do you wish for me to tell him, or will it be a surprise?”

“A surprise,” Mai decides. That way if she changes her mind at the last second, no one but Iroh will be any the wiser.

She doesn’t change her mind.

She rings the doorbell, and hears Iroh call out, “Zuko, can you get it? I have my hands full with the jasmine!” It almost makes her smile.

A pounding of footsteps, and Zuko opens the door, and the shock on his face is comical.

He’s not much taller than he was at eighteen, before they graduated and she got to stop seeing him around every other corner. He’s filled out a little, grown into his sharp angles, and his hair’s a little longer, in need of a cut. He’s wearing the same sweater he’s owned the entire time she’s known him, re-darned whenever it sprang a hole but never being thrown out because he loved the feel of the wool.

“Mai,” he whispers, and his voice is just the same. She could never forget that distinctive rasp. He backs up a step to let her in, and then, without warning, flings himself to his knees in front of her.

“Mai. I am so, so sorry for everything. I understand if you can’t forgive me for it, but I’m so sorry and ashamed of what I did to you. And I wasn’t ready to hear it, but. You were right. About everything.”

If she’s honest with herself, this is what she was afraid of—the way her anger melts away at his words and his posture. She sits on the ground, putting them back on the same level.

“You were a jerk,” she tells him. He nods sadly.

“Yes. I was.”

“You know it takes all the fun out of being mad at you when you agree with me, right?”

He looks up at her, and god, he has _no right_ to look this devastated.

“I don’t think I’ve ever regretted anything more.”

She sucks in a breath. She doesn’t say _what about speaking up that day and making your dad drag you by your hair to the stove and literally torture you?_ Instead, she says, “So all that time I was hating you for what you did, you were hating yourself for it too?”

“I’m such a coward,” he tells her, dropping his eyes. “It took me two _years_ before I was able to accept that you were right, and then I couldn’t face you. I was too much of a coward to reach out until you’d already changed your number.”

She hadn’t realized that he’d tried to contact her at all, and it melts the last little bit of resistance in her. “Come here,” she says quietly, and opens her arms. He does, and they wrap each other in a tight hug. Zuko’s breath hitches, and his shoulders shake, and she realizes with a shock that he’s crying, or something like it. Sympathetic tears prick at her own eyes, and she lets them fall, grieving for the kids they had been, the relationship they could have had, if he hadn’t asked her for sex, if she had found something else to say, if he’d been ready to hear it or at least adjusted enough to move past it, if, if, if.

“I should have broken up with you before we even got to that point,” she realizes. “We could have been _friends._ ”

“Don’t,” he tells her, steadying somewhat. “You were just a kid, too. And you loved me, right? You can’t go blaming yourself for not making the mature grown-up decision. We can’t change what happened.”

“Do you even hear yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t blaming yourself for not making the mature grown-up decision about a thing you can’t change _exactly_ what you’ve been doing this entire time?”

A beat, and then he starts laughing into her shoulder. It’s a wavery laugh, still thick with tears, but it’s real.

“Fair enough. Maybe we can both forgive ourselves for being dumb kids? And, if you want. We could, uh. Still be friends? Friends again, I mean.”

She must be quiet for too long, because he pulls away and says, “If you don’t want to, that’s okay, too,” scrubbing at his face and refusing to look at her again.

Something in her balks at letting him back in so easily, a voice telling her that she should make him work for it on principle, how silly she’ll look to everyone she’s ever told how much she hates the ex-boyfriend who broke her heart, but she catches his hand and lets the kinder part of herself win.

“I’d like that.”

The theatre club advertises _Love Amongst the Dragons,_ and Zuko doesn’t tell anyone when he goes to auditions—anyone except Mai, that is.

_You really think this isn’t a dumb idea_

_The worst that can happen is you don’t get cast, dumbass. And that won’t be the end of the world. You can ALWAYS go back to crew._

_The worst that can happen is I do get cast and I’m terrible_

_You have way more emotional range than you did when you were sixteen. You’ll be fine. Trust your casting director._

They’d spent winter break catching up, and Mai talked him into breaking out his old recording of the play. It was utterly embarrassing on the one hand to rewatch it with a better understanding of some of the reasons he’d loved it, but cathartic on the other. They’d even taken to doing dramatic readings of it.

Uncle took a video of them doing Eska and Desna and _someone_ sent it to _Sokka,_ who sent it to everyone else, who blew up Zuko’s phone with supportive messages and approving emojis. Zuko’s never had so many friends in his life, and he’s never gone so long without needing to burn himself.

The stage manager calls him in and the director introduces herself.

“You have a monologue prepared?”

Zuko nods. “Act three, scene five.”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

He takes a deep breath and attempts to center himself and get in character.

“That gallant spirit hath aspir’d the clouds,  
Which too untimely here did scorn the earth.  
Absent me from felicity will I,  
And in this harsh world draw my breath in pain,   
To tell thy tale. Give order that these bodies  
High on a stage be placed to the view.”

He closes his eyes and lets his voice crack.

"And call the noblest to the audience.  
For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune:   
I have some rights of mem’ry in this kingdom,  
And let me speak to the yet unknowing world  
How these things came about: so shall you hear  
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,  
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,  
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause.”

He gentles his words, aimed now to the dead friend.

“Death, that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath,  
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty:  
Thou art not conquer’d, beauty’s ensign yet  
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,  
And death’s pale flag is not advanced there.”

“Just out of curiosity,” says the director when he finishes, “are you reading it as a gay relationship?”

He startles. “I, uh. Yes? I have for a long time. Because of Hou-ting Wu and Yin Mako? But, uh. Losing a friend can mess you up just as badly as losing a lover, you know? It could go either way.”

“The everlasting struggle,” the director agrees, nodding. “Two wolves fight within you. One wolf says ‘let men have intensely emotional platonic relationships with each other,’ and one says ‘let them be gay.’ Both wolves are right.”

“Which way are you planning to do it?”

“I generally leave these kinds of things up to the actor’s call. It doesn’t strongly affect the overall direction of the story, but it does severely hamper some of our actors to be asked to play characters in a way that doesn’t make sense to them.” She grins. “Personally, though, I think it’s pretty gay to be describing the color of your buddy’s lips.”

Zuko laughs and agrees with her.

He throws his lighter in the garbage before he gets the cast list. Just in case.

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory plug of my tumblr [here](https://khashanakalashtar.tumblr.com/tagged/disrespect-verse).
> 
> I love that I can just google ‘Nuktuk episode’ and wiki will give me a play by play of the plot of the Nuktuk movers XD
> 
> So on the offchance any of my readers are too young to remember VHS: Back in the days before DVD, we watched things on tape, which is literally a strip of film wound around some gears. The VHS player would cause the gears to turn and run the tape past the reader. You had to rewind it afterwards. Once in a great while, the machine would catch on the film and unspool it from the tape, ruining the tape. It happened more to cassette tapes, though. (Readers who ARE old enough to remember this feeling old yet? I am, and I'm only 25.)
> 
> Text from Love Amongst the Dragons is a mix of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. Why is Hero of the South not the play on film? I did try to do it the other way, y’all, but it does not work as well.
> 
> Several of y'all were excited to see Iroh--let me know what you thought! This doesn't have to be the last of him. Was there something in particular you wanted to see that I didn't do?


End file.
